For those seeking a bit of escapism, Ghost Town is a 147-page hyper-hallucination steeped in the Old West. Robert Coover, best known for his 1977 political satire A Public Burning, here explodes myths of frontier life from the inside out. There is colorful dialogue in highly exaggerated patois. There is vivid violence. The style is almost purple, but it elevates the action, like a series of instrumental solos, instead of taking you out of it.
At base is a classic story, a nameless lone rider who happens upon a dusty town. In this twisty version, however, the dusty town needs a sheriff and promptly grants the title to him, the first outrider to sally in. Is this the stuff of dreams or nightmares? It's a greasy hybrid, to be sure, and one of dreams folded within dreams.
He finds himself stretched out in black satin and for a moment he thinks he's in a coffin. No, no, I aint dead! he gasps, trying to rise.
Shore yu aint, sheriff honey. The saloon chanteuse is sitting at her dressing table powdering her breasts. He falls back in to the bed, feeling like he'd been kicked below by a horse. Beyond the open windows […] he can hear creaking wagon wheels, the blacksmith's hammer, booted feet treading wooden sidewalks, curses, whinnies, shouts, the occasional gunshot. These sounds seem aimed at him, of no more duration than his need of them, and maybe, in the way that towns talk to sheriffs, they are. Though it wuz tetch'n go fer a time, sweetie.
I wuz having a fearsome dream. Ifn it wuz a dream. Seemed so real.
It's the intermittent gunshots that get me, the comic excess of it, as though you'll be shot for carrying your chaw in the wrong cheek, or maybe you're all just squeezing triggers as an expression of high spirits.
This is a setting where fate deals the cards ruthlessly. Our main character, the sheriff, remembers meeting a train robber who came West to escape small-town "storifying," the type that dictates a life before and after it's lived. Train robber intended to "yarn his own dyin" out here. This effort, the man reports in livid curse, has failed. Out here, there are larger forces blowing.
In the end we see sheriff no-name pursuing a derailed train down an abandoned mineshaft. Here is the iron horse of fate in full froth, also linked to the object of the sheriff's desire, a regular prairie sorceress. If you're looking for tidy resolution, this story isn't for you. It is rather a scenic detour through a fabulous imagination. It will have you wondering if base desire beats out both religion and retribution, or if it was all in his daggobbed head.
Kate Oden is a freelance writer, editor, and translator living in Hanover. She publishes more brief book reviews on Substack.
